London’s police spend over $16,000 per day to stake out Julian Assange

But Metropolitan Police commissioner hopes the Home Office will reimburse.

Flat 3b, 3 Hans Crescent is the address of the Embassy of Ecuador in London.

Cyrus Farivar

According to a new letter from the Metropolitan Police, London is spending an average of £10,982 ($16,384) per day to stake out the Ecuadorian Embassy where Julian Assange has been holed up for the last 386 days. Earlier this year, Ars attempted to interview Assange at this embassy, but the WikiLeaks founder did not respond to our queries.

The letter was sent by the Met to London assembly member Jenny Jones on July 1, 2013 and received a week later on July 8, 2013. The document states that of the total £3.8 million ($5.6 million) spent between June 2012 and the end of May 2013, £0.7 million of that represented “increased overtime payments.”

The Met seems to dismiss Jones' concerns that London itself will have to pay such a huge amount to stake out one man.

“Although the Metropolitan Police has not yet formally sought reimbursement from the Home Office regarding these costs, we are now in early discussions with Home Office officials regarding this,” writes Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, commissioner of the Met, in the letter. “This is primarily a diplomatic matter and as a result the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are leading the government efforts to resolve this. The MPs are closely involved in discussions over this and we will continue to regularly review our approach.”

Hmmm lets do some quick math.Assumption... highly paid cops making maybe 80 grand a year and say 260 work days a year.80,000/260= 307 dollars per cop per day16,000/307=52 cops to stake out one building? What are they locked arms in a circle around the building chanting 'Red rover red rover send Julian right over???'

They could just stop staking him out...? Pretty sure the guy isn't coming out any time soon.

Or they could even just allow him dissident protection and safe passage to Ecuador and end the witch hunt he's been subject to for years.

Under what grounds? Sweden applied for his extradiction via the European Arrest Warrant. He was free to use the UK legal process to fight this extradiction request and he did so but the courts found no reason to halt the extradiction as all the legal obligations were met by Sweden (it's not for the UK to decide guilt either).

He has publically used the possiblity of onward extradiction as a reason for fight the request but he hasn't used this in court, his only chance of fighting it on dissident grounds, because it's nonsense. The terms of a extradiction treaty means that you can't extract someone from a country to which they have already been extradicted without permission of the first country. In other words it would be stupid for the US to extradite him from Sweden as they would still need to seek permission from the UK as well as Sweden rather than just the UK. If America wanted him it would be far quicker to seek permission directly from the UK, a country whose proven more than willing to do that already, rather than adding Sweden to the process.

Clearly they didn't spend all that money on overtime... I wonder where all those millions actually went..?!

As is clearly printed in the document, £3.1M is the "staffing costs", i.e. the officers normal salaries. They would have been paid anyway, although the officers would most likely be doing some other errand meanwhile.

A lot of the excess cost involved in a scenario like this has to do with diplomatic immunity and the results thereof. For example, CCTV monitoring in and around embassies is regulated in a different manner than most public places. Additionally, any remote monitoring would involve a response time, during which there is time to enter a diplomatic vehicle. As such, the police must have both monitoring and arresting capability there for immediate action.

Finally, whether it's warranted or not, even if we assume Assange's case is not clear-cut (debatable, but not the point), this response, too, is more a diplomatic move if anything else. It is the UK stating that it does not accept this type of action. A large part is posturing.

This must be the most expensive police operation just to get one person to questioning. Remember, so far he hasn't even been formally charged with a crime and that according to the prosecution (!) the sex was consensual. (source: http://blog.sfgate.com/abraham/2010/12/ ... g-condoms/ )

The question if Assange has been charged or not is bound to arise, and which will follow is questions on why Sweden has not formally charged him, yet issued an arrest warrant…

In Sweden the prosecutor is bound to question the suspect before deciding if she/he is to bring any charges (take the person to court). This is somewhat different from other nations which often bring charges and then bring in the wanter person for questioning.

I'm not sure how a man could earn such respect when what those decent folk in Sweden want to question him for molesting women.

I'm not sure how a woman could earn such credibility when she only decides it's molestation after the fact, happily throwing her "attacker" parties and accommodating him in her home after the incident took place...

Hmmm lets do some quick math.Assumption... highly paid cops making maybe 80 grand a year and say 260 work days a year.80,000/260= 307 dollars per cop per day16,000/307=52 cops to stake out one building? What are they locked arms in a circle around the building chanting 'Red rover red rover send Julian right over???'

Yeah, because they only stake out the building from 9 to 5, and only 260 days per year.

:rolls eyes:

/If you ever go "Hmm lets do some serious math", It's time to run for the hills.

Hmmm lets do some quick math.Assumption... highly paid cops making maybe 80 grand a year and say 260 work days a year.80,000/260= 307 dollars per cop per day16,000/307=52 cops to stake out one building? What are they locked arms in a circle around the building chanting 'Red rover red rover send Julian right over???'

Yeah, because they only stake out the building from 9 to 5, and only 260 days per year.

:rolls eyes:

/If you ever go "Hmm lets do some serious math", It's time to run for the hills.

I think his point was how many man shifts are the using to cover one building. And his math is plausible, assuming no overtime, they are spending enough per day to fund 52 8 hour shifts on policemen. That's a lot of overhead.

To me, and most sane individuals who don't stand to gain anything from Assange's arrest, this seems like an egregious waste of money that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. But after thinking about it for a minute, I can only imagine the embarrassment the UK government would suffer if he were to somehow slip out and vanish, not to mention whatever exactly goes on behind closed doors. I'm not defending this expenditure of money, but I can see why it's being allowed to happen.

Also, please tell me I'm not the only one who read the dollar amount ($16,384) and immediately converted it to 2^14th power in my head.

They could just stop staking him out...? Pretty sure the guy isn't coming out any time soon.

Or they could even just allow him dissident protection and safe passage to Ecuador and end the witch hunt he's been subject to for years.

Or, if he's really not a rapist, he could stand trial in Sweden and have his name cleared.

If i considered myself innocent and i were in his position i wouldn't want to face trial either. Especially given that the circumstance is consent was removed part way through.

He's not likely to get a fair and objective trial. He's likely to get a women crying foul with high strung emotions, in a he said she said evidence display. At the end of the day it'll probably come down to the court of opinion and unless it's absolutely unequivalent evident that he is innocent, he'll be found guilty.

Hmmm lets do some quick math.Assumption... highly paid cops making maybe 80 grand a year and say 260 work days a year.80,000/260= 307 dollars per cop per day16,000/307=52 cops to stake out one building? What are they locked arms in a circle around the building chanting 'Red rover red rover send Julian right over???'

Yeah, because they only stake out the building from 9 to 5, and only 260 days per year.

:rolls eyes:

/If you ever go "Hmm lets do some serious math", It's time to run for the hills.

I think his point was how many man shifts are the using to cover one building. And his math is plausible, assuming no overtime, they are spending enough per day to fund 52 8 hour shifts on policemen. That's a lot of overhead.

From the way he worded it he clearly wasn't.

And it wouldn't come out to 52 8 hour shifts anyway since he's only allowing for 260 days per year in his calculation.

/edit: If you're willing to just pull a 80k number out of your ass, you could redo the calculation. But that basic assumption is incorrect as well.

They could just stop staking him out...? Pretty sure the guy isn't coming out any time soon.

Or they could even just allow him dissident protection and safe passage to Ecuador and end the witch hunt he's been subject to for years.

Or, if he's really not a rapist, he could stand trial in Sweden and have his name cleared.

I think everyone concerned would like to see that outcome, yet despite negotiations with the assistance of the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange can't even secure from Sweden that upon arriving there he won't be extradited to the US. It seems competing interests are at play here.

He couldn't secure that from the UK, either, but he still fled to the UK from Sweden. It's not the US he's trying to evade. If it was, he would never have gone to the UK. It's Sweden.

Hmmm lets do some quick math.Assumption... highly paid cops making maybe 80 grand a year and say 260 work days a year.80,000/260= 307 dollars per cop per day16,000/307=52 cops to stake out one building? What are they locked arms in a circle around the building chanting 'Red rover red rover send Julian right over???'

Yeah, because they only stake out the building from 9 to 5, and only 260 days per year.

:rolls eyes:

/If you ever go "Hmm lets do some serious math", It's time to run for the hills.

I think his point was how many man shifts are the using to cover one building. And his math is plausible, assuming no overtime, they are spending enough per day to fund 52 8 hour shifts on policemen. That's a lot of overhead.

From the way he worded it he clearly wasn't.

And it wouldn't come out to 52 8 hour shifts anyway since he's only allowing for 260 days per year in his calculation.

/edit: If you're willing to just pull a 80k number out of your ass, you could redo the calculation. But that basic assumption is incorrect as well.

So how many work days do YOU think there are in a year? Me, I work 5 days a week, and get 4 weeks vacation. 52-4=48 48x5=240. I would say 260 work days is a maximum number and ok for discussion purposes.

They could just stop staking him out...? Pretty sure the guy isn't coming out any time soon.

Or they could even just allow him dissident protection and safe passage to Ecuador and end the witch hunt he's been subject to for years.

Or, if he's really not a rapist, he could stand trial in Sweden and have his name cleared.

With everything we suspected before I'd be unlikely to want to put my life and liberty in the hands of any US ally were I in his position.

After the verification that Snowden has provided I'd definitely not trust any ally of the US with my life and liberty were I considered a US intelligence community liability as Assange is.

Sorry if I don't buy sexual assault charges conveniently surfacing around him. They're one of the most questionable charges that can be made as consensual sex can suddenly become a practically indefensible rape charge of a woman decides to change her mind about a guy after the fact.

They could just stop staking him out...? Pretty sure the guy isn't coming out any time soon.

Or they could even just allow him dissident protection and safe passage to Ecuador and end the witch hunt he's been subject to for years.

Or, if he's really not a rapist, he could stand trial in Sweden and have his name cleared.

I think everyone concerned would like to see that outcome, yet despite negotiations with the assistance of the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange can't even secure from Sweden that upon arriving there he won't be extradited to the US. It seems competing interests are at play here.

Assange is asking for this as a PR stunt because he knows it cannot be promised. The US haven't applied for him to be extradited yet and if they did it would be a matter of legal process based on the terms of that request. How can Sweden promise that their judges will refuse a request they haven't received for crimes that are not specified?

Finally it's all pointless anyway. The US could have just made an application to the UK. Even if he goes to Sweden they would have to do that anyway, going to Sweden just makes it harder for the States to get him as they would have to go through the requests twice.

They could just stop staking him out...? Pretty sure the guy isn't coming out any time soon.

Or they could even just allow him dissident protection and safe passage to Ecuador and end the witch hunt he's been subject to for years.

Or, if he's really not a rapist, he could stand trial in Sweden and have his name cleared.

I think everyone concerned would like to see that outcome, yet despite negotiations with the assistance of the Ecuadorian embassy, Assange can't even secure from Sweden that upon arriving there he won't be extradited to the US. It seems competing interests are at play here.

I wrote this in the "Venezuela and Nicaragua make offers of asylum to Snowden" thread, but it might be of use here as well:

There are two legal hindrances that prevents Sweden from making such a promise.

The first is Sweden's Grundlag (essentially Sweden''s constitution) which prevents both local county and the national government(s) from interfering with the decisions and rulings of government agencies. What those agencies come to decide can never be influenced by any member of the government.

No public authority, including the Riksdag and the decision-making bodies of local authorities, may determine how an administrative authority shall decide in a particular case relating to the exercise of public authority vis-à-vis a private subject or a local authority, or relating to the application of law. - Constitution of Sweden, chapter 11, article 7

This is because the strong separation between the executive and legislative branches of Swedish government. See also Ministerstyre: Government agencies (similar but not the same as executive agencies), which are separate organisational entities from the ministries, are fundamentally independent in their handling of individual cases, and only the government (by collective decision-making) can issue instructions to agencies. Thus, a version of the independence of the political power that courts have in most countries applies to a larger set of agencies in Sweden.

Another hindrance is that Sweden would be unable to make such a promise is the law The Extradition for Criminal Offences Act (1957:668) in which Sweden is obliged to extradite a person if certain conditions are met. These conditions (among some other) would be:

1. Assange must stand no risk of political persecution, or stand trial for what could be seen as political offences. (Section 6)2. The offence which Assange will stand trial for does not include the death penalty. (Section 12)3. The offence for which the extradition is asked must also be illegal in Sweden. (Section 4)4. Assange will not stand trial for any other offence other than that which the extradition request pertains. (Section 12)

If the extradition request fulfils the requirements of the law, Sweden must follow it. This is essentially the same law that UK's courts decided upon when ruling on whether or not to allow the Swedish extradition request.

Sweden's legislative branch could potentially interfere once the Supreme Court has made its decision, but that is only after the judgement has been declared, and invoking such powers would mean that the situation is equivalent of a national state of emergency. They could also vote on new laws that would make Assange more safe against extradition, but that (like the journey through the three levels of Swedish courts), is a lengthy one.

Tl;dr: Making a promise to skirt ones own constitution and international agreements is not done easily.